‘Once in a decade’: Residents in Eston, Sask. reflect on torrential downpour that turned streets into rivers

WATCH: As Brittany Poitras explains, thunderstorms over the weekend caused severe flooding in southwest Saskatchewan.

Over the weekend, thunderstorms swept across southwest Saskatchewan, leading to some truly spectacular reports of flash flooding in the communities of Eston and Assiniboia.

Residents in Eston, which is located 380 kilometres northwest of Regina, could be seen walking through knee-deep water on Saturday, July 19. Some were even spotted sailing canoes down the town’s streets.

The town’s mayor, Darcy Morrice, says the storm produced a kind of downpour those in area haven’t seen in a very long time.

“It’s created a lot of damage for some residents. There [are] some basements that are flooding, streets that were flooding. Yeah, it’s kind of a once in a … decade kind of flood," he said.

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Morrice went on to say that the community’s 35-foot-deep lift station where water is collected, is at an all-time high.

“It’s never been full before and it was,” he said. “They pumped out a million gallons of water out of the lift station since Saturday afternoon.”

According to Crawford Luke, a meteorologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC), Saturday’s rainfall totalled 100 millimetres in some areas.

“So that would be all three rounds of rain. So, we’re talking about twice the monthly average over the span of 12 hours,” he explained.

Crawford says the alarming floods in the area are caused by heavy rainfall in a very short period.

“When you get a heavy downpour from a thunderstorm on top of that, there’s just kind of not really the ground is not really able to absorb that extra water, and so it becomes overland flooding essentially,” he added.

According to Morrice, the elevated water in the region has affected roughly three-quarters of Eston’s 1,000 residents.

However, thanks to the clean up efforts, Morrice says everything is “Back to business.”

While the community has been hard at work cleaning up the carnage and fixing the issues caused by the weekend storm – Mother Nature is not quite done yet.

More rainfall to be expected in the coming days, although Crawford predicts the forecasted storm will not be as intense as the weekend. The threat of continued rainfall is expected to taper off by Wednesday or Thursday.

“Hopefully we can get a break from the showers and thunderstorms and our temperatures will start to rebound,” he concluded.

“[Its] actually, looking quite hot as we get it into the end of the week and towards next weekend.”